I hear it all the time from skeptics: the Bible didn’t exist for hundreds of years after Jesus died. If true, that would imply that “established Christianity” differs from “original Christianity.” This opens the door to all kinds of other nonsense, like Jesus not existing, Jesus not being God, and more.
Not only that, but even some who claim to be Christians are willing to jump on the conspiracy bandwagon and make claims that don’t match history. For example:
- Jesus taught one kind of Christianity, and the apostle Paul taught another.
- Jesus was only a man, but legends developed until people believed He was divine.
- The truth of “real Christianity” has been hidden from us by the evil schemes of the powerful. What Jesus really said and did has been suppressed by removing accurate documents like the so-called Gnostic gospels and destroying the evidence.
I could go on. Most of these kind of claims can be traced back to a single idea: that the New Testament, which Christians consider their primary Scripture, is a product purposefully manufactured to keep the truth from the people, and to keep the powerful in power. This could only happen if the truths of the New Testament as we know it weren’t widely known and accepted by the early church.
That’s the basis for such claims, and for silly arguments about the Council of Nicea, and for nonsense about Constantine making up his own religion. The question is simple: what did the early church believe, and when did they believe it?
In this article, Alisa Childers lays out five basics facts of history to show that the New Testament as we know it was known in the early church, believed by the early church, defended by the early church, and is the same New Testament we have today.
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